Understanding AI’s significance in marketing in 2024
Marketing has gone through some colossal changes since the mid-20th century. It’s skipped between advertising billboards, radio jingles, TV advertisements, and now the rise of social media marketing and mass internet advertising.
The latest development, which is taking hold in the sector, is powered by AI which is morphing strategies and long-term plans in the marketing sector, just as it is in seemingly every other area of the internet. Today, we will examine digital marketing across the sector, covering SEO strategies, social media marketing and how smaller companies are optimising AI tools to perfect their mediumto long-term plans to grow their business.
Digital marketing explained and how AI has entered the fray
It’s not just social media sites like YouTube and Instagram that allow users with many followers and subscribers to advertise and monetise their platform. Search engines, andGoogle specifically, are the latest route that companies take to try and spread the news of their brand to potential clientele. Search engine optimisation (SEO) is a technique that digital marketing companies regularly use in a bid to rank highly on Google—ideally, on page one.
Google is notoriously tight-lipped regarding the criteria it uses to rank websites, and this is where the challenge lies for digital marketing companies. Throw AI into this mix, and the whole equation changes. Instead of having a strict framework revolving around keywords and phrases, AI is being used to drill further into the user’s intent. AI’s impact on SEO will be profound asit will reshape how search engines view people’s searches on their sites.
Instead of using localised advertisements, digital marketing means that the global population has one monolithic resource they can use to find information. If you need to find a fact or you’re looking for news, where do you go online?
Exploring the current landscape of digital marketing
To paint a picture of how marketing is changing, doing some number-crunching may help. Google is the dominant force in this sector, handling over 100,000 searches per second. If you can get your business or product onto a website that handles over 8 billion searches within any 24 hours, then it’s pretty clear that it’s going to drive a lot of customers your way.
Digital marketing agencies can charge tens of thousands of dollars for astrategy to ensure a high ranking, so the stakes are incredibly high. In contrast, traditional platforms like newspapers and radio now offer very cheap advertising space, purely due to their sales and the number of people who engage with them havingdropped so dramatically.
Digital marketing also includes social media. With over 4 billion users combined across social media platforms, many people spend multiple hours per day on their mobile devices, scrolling Instagram or TikTok. Social media is a phenomenal resource for new customers. For companies that are able to get their social media marketing strategy on point, it can be a lucrative way to promote a business.
More companies are using AI tools to generate advertising ideas specifically for TikTok or Instagram, and while it might be a bit hit and miss at the moment, and as companies arefacing global competition, establishing a strong social media presence and generating customers and income via these channels can be challenging.
How businesses are using AI to develop strategy
While SEO is changing rapidly because of AI, profound changes are also happening at a grassroots level. Many companies are using AI tools like ChatGPT to devise business plans and generate ideas regardinghow they should advertise. Even up until a few years ago, the idea of asking an AI bot or tool to devise a business plan would’ve been frowned upon to say the least.
However, ChatGPT is a phenomenal example of where the industry is heading and provides a real modern-day use case of how it will benefit people en masse. Consider other burgeoning industries such ascryptocurrency. Despite significant changes and becoming more accessible to institutional investors, it’s been a struggle for it to become mainstream.
ChatGPT has become such an enormous, seemingly overnight success story that it’s become an integral part of digital business marketing. Tools such as ChatGPT can create free-form content quickly, and this providesincredible benefits for companies that rely on quickfire, weekly bulletins and leaflets, whether this isa bar posting about events taking place over the course of the week or automated social media posts.
Ultimately, companies are freeing up time for their marketing staff by making use ofthese tools. It’s giving them more breathing space to think of unique strategies and allows them more time to create other longer-term strategies knowing that weekly administrative tasks are covered by AI programs.
What’s on the horizon?
It’s a brave, exciting new world if you’re involved in the AI sector. It seems like every industry is looking for AI solutions, and the mesmerising success of Nvidia has shown just how much money there is in AI. While some naysayers may have dismissed this current trend as a flash in the pan initially, there’s now no doubt at all that the industry is here to stay, and it’s here to change everything about our society.
Marketing is just another arm of business that will be revolutionised by AI. As the technology continues to innovate, we could soon begin to see AI advertisements involving 100% entirely generated robots, figures, character actors or voiceovers. In fact, some companies already use AI voiceover tools, and it’s aspecific area of marketing that is under significant threat.
We expect to see the current landscape continue as it is, with companies utilising these tools to streamline their broader strategy and move with the innovations to create more dynamic and refined advertising campaigns. No other innovation has been able to change marketing in such a short space of time. Even the internet took a decade or so to really change how companies operated, so the next decade of AI in marketing will be fascinating.